1. Field of Invention
The present invention pertains to vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (VTOL), also capable of short take off and landing (STOL), with a configuration capable of hovering with low disc loading and winged flight at a mach number near the speed of sound.
2. Prior Art
In the 1960's, and prior to that time, and after that time, various efforts have been conducted to have aircraft with wings for high speed flight capable of having vertical flight capability. Example of some configurations are the deflected slipstream approach pursued by Fairchild, the tilting wing with tilting propellers pursued by Hiller, the tail sitter VTOL attempted by Ryan, the wing tip lift jets separate from forward thrust jets pursued by Dornier, the X rotor VTOL which stopped its rotor to act as wings in forward flight, and many other configurations including the tilting ducted fans, and various forms of stoppable: rotor, stoppable rotors and convertiplanes.
After many years of efforts in the US and other countries, two aircraft technologies capable of VTOL; with STOL capability, emerged as for practical applications, exemplified in the following aircraft:
For High Speed Flight Regime:
The Harrier and Harrier II, utilizing vectored thrust of a single fan jet engine described in column 1 of table 1. It is capable of high subsonic speed of Mach 0.85, with an extremely high disc loading during vertical flight (order of 26 lb/ft 2.). As a consequence, its fuel consumption is very high during vertical flight, its range is short, and the time it can operate in vertical flight is very restricted.
For Efficient Vertical and Slow Speed Flight:
The Osprey or V-22, utilizing two rotors that can be tilted located at the extreme of a fixed wing with interconnecting shafts, described in second column of tablet. It has a very low disc loading (order of 4 lb per ft2) and therefore capable of prolonged flight in vertical mode and very low speeds. On the other hand, the high speed is limited by compressibility effects on the tips of rotors tilted forward for winged flight, and therefore its maximum forward speed is about half that of the Harrier.
Prior efforts to develop aircraft capable of a double flight regime have been attempted in the past, but they have failed in the marketplace. The design features of some of these efforts are presented in the following examples:
A single stoppable rotor, or tandem stoppable rotors, proposed for crafts with wings for higher speeds, present formidable problems in transition between rotor supported flight and wing supported flight, because of the large asymmetric forces experienced by the rotors as their rotational speed approximates zero with forward speed increases. There is also the problem on how to minimize the drag of the stopped rotor, for example by stowing the rotor in a fuselage, or leaving it exposed as in the X rotor, to act as wings. With a three bladed rotor, fairing can be accomplished by swinging backwards the three blades for high speed flight regime, which is mechanically very complex. A stopped 2 bladed rotor with the forward blade extending forwardly beyond a fuselage would encounter very high loads on the forward blade in high speed flight. This assumes that the asymmetric loads on the rotor as it approached zero RPM would have been solved, which is unlikely. Specific examples of attempts to combine vertical flight with wing lift for forward flight have been tested, for example: Vanguard Omniplane with twin motors installed inside each wing; the Fairy Rotodyne McDonnel XV-1 combining a large central rotor with fixed wings; Dornier DO31 combining multiple jets at the tip of conventional wings with a separate jet engine for forward flight; the EWR VJ 101C, the Convair XFY1 Pogo tail sitter with two large contra rotating rotors and a delta wing; the Curtiss Wright.times.100 and 1.times.19; the Dock 16 V7-4; the Bell X-22A; the Nord 500 Cadet; the tilt wings Vertol 76, Hiller X-18, and Canadian CL84. It is noted however, that the Dornier DO-31 was penalized with heavy high fuel consumption in vertical flight worse than the Harrier. All of the above attempts failed to reach production, among other reasons, for not having configurations suitable for high speed of the order of Mach 0.8, which the Harrier does have, and most of them had disc loading in hover too high for vertical flight with low fuel consumption.